


one step down from the angels

by IneffableDoll



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Asexual Aziraphale (Good Omens), Asexual Crowley (Good Omens), Banter, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Ficlet, Fluff, Holding Hands, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Kinda, M/M, Philosophy, Post-Canon, Tenderness, but still very new, can be queerplatonic or romantic, musings on the meaning of perfection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:00:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29539272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IneffableDoll/pseuds/IneffableDoll
Summary: Crowley’s eyes twinkled and he grinned, something softer than his earlier sharpness. “You’re perfect, angel.”Aziraphale looked away, conflicting feelings rising in his chest. “You know I’m not perfect,” he murmured.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 53
Collections: Aspec-friendly Good Omens





	one step down from the angels

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, I have strong feelings about the word “perfect.” Here’s a ficlet about that. Title from a quote by Jeannette Walls.  
> (Side note: It’s been almost exactly a year since I posted my first fan fic! Thanks for all the support over this year, it’s been a lot of fun!)

_In his dream he reached his sordid home all out of breath, but with eyes dancing with grateful enthusiasm; cast four of his pennies into his mother’s lap and cried out-_

“Oh, drat,” Aziraphale muttered, almost habitually, as the spilled tea leaves fluttered to the counter. In one hand, he held aloft a book – _The Prince and the Pauper –_ and, in the other, was attempting to prepare a pot of tea. He’d been so distracted by the book that he’d missed entirely and dumped the tea leaves nowhere near the infuser.

“Hmm?” Crowley hummed vaguely from the table, where he was slouched and glaring at his phone, sunglasses shoved up into his hair as he squinted and pecked. There was a domestic edge to it, the way Crowley reacted to him so naturally yet carelessly. Like this level of comfort between them wasn’t all of two or three months in the making.

“Just spilled some tea leaves, dear.”

“Hmm,” he grunted again. “Couldn’t stand to tear your eyes from your book for three seconds?”

“Oh, do hush.”

Aziraphale swept up the tea leaves and prepared it properly this time, still refusing to put the book down on principle. When he returned to the table with their cups, he found Crowley had set aside his cellular device and was gazing at him, chin propped in his palm. 

Crowley smiled adoringly (and wasn’t that wonderful to see so openly, now?). “Any good, then?”

“It hasn’t finished steeping yet,” Aziraphale replied.

“Meant the book. That’s one by that Clemens guy, right?”

Aziraphale sat and set the book open on the table, keeping his place with his index finger. “Yes. I’m afraid I never met him. I wasn’t in the Americas for any of the 19th century.”

“Too busy with your gavotting nonsense, right?” Crowley replied with a grin.

Aziraphale rolled his eyes indulgently, as if they hadn’t performed the rituals of this joke a dozen times. He never tired of the teasing, and the back and forth, and reveled in it even now. “I was very good at it, I’ll have you know,” he said in an uppity tone.

“Sure, but would it really kill you to try just _one_ modern dance?”

“Oh, certainly not, but I still don’t intend to.”

Crowley groaned. “Insufferable nitpick.”

“Duly noted.”

“You always want things just so, huh?” Crowley leered, practically falling over the table with how far over it he was leaning. “Always so fussy and perfect.”

Aziraphale stared at him for a beat. “What?”

Crowley’s eyes twinkled and he grinned, something softer than his earlier sharpness. “You’re perfect, angel.”

Aziraphale looked away, conflicting feelings rising in his chest. “You know I’m not perfect,” he murmured. 

“Course you are. To me.” The demon looked embarrassed, but he didn’t take it back.

Aziraphale hesitated. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to really say what was on his mind, especially as it would rather spoil the lighthearted mood…but could see the worried crease growing betwixt Crowley’s eyebrows. He was under no obligation to tell him, exactly, but Aziraphale wanted to share this. Even if it was a little bit uncomfortable for both parties.

Aziraphale took a deep breath and said carefully, “I can’t be perfect, my dear. That was, well, that was my problem in Heaven, really.” He barreled on before Crowley could interrupt. “I was never perfect enough for the other angels and was rather a constant disappointment to them as a result.”

Crowley looked wrongfooted, sitting up slowly as Aziraphale spoke and tugging the sunglasses out of his hair to set them aside blindly. “Angel-”

“But I do understand, now,” Aziraphale continued quietly, studying the wall opposite him and not the friend at his side, “that their standard was not a…good one. Their standard of perfection was…cruel and required me to be cruel. I don’t mind being imperfect in their eyes, anymore. Yet I know I’d fall short of most any such measure.”

“Angel, you’re-” Crowley let out a frustrated breath. “You – your worth, you know it’s not something that can be measured like that, right? I-I-I l-love you just as you are,” he managed between gritted teeth, like it physically pained him to say.

Aziraphale looked at Crowley, then, and his blushing scowl. He felt his own expression soften. “Please don’t misunderstand,” he murmured gently. “I see your sentiment, I do. And I appreciate it. But…I spent, so, so long trying to be perfect that being able to admit I’m not, and to – to _accept_ that…I find it very liberating to believe that I don’t have to be.”

Crowley blinked slowly. “That you don’t have to be perfect, you mean?”

Aziraphale smiled at him and placed his hand over Crowley’s. The demon started. “To believe that I will be loved, even though I am not perfect.”

The demon’s cheeks flared at that. He wasn’t used to the open affection any more than Aziraphale was, but it was different. Crowley was usually the one initiating hand-holding, hugs, and cuddling, but words were the angel’s territory. “Y-You will be,” Crowley managed. “Are.”

Aziraphale beamed at him. “I know. And likewise, for you. That’s why I wanted to tell you, my dear. I don’t…I don’t feel the need to be perfect anymore. You make me feel like it’s okay to just be…me. Imperfect as I am.”

Crowley turned his hand under Aziraphale’s and laced their fingers together. For a long moment, he simply gazed at their entwined hands with open affection and an odd concentration. He was gathering his words, so Aziraphale let the silence linger. He shoved a bookmark in his book so he wouldn’t have to hold it open any longer, placing it aside for later continuation.

“Perfection…for demons, see, ‘s not really a thing,” Crowley began eventually. “There’s something inherently flawed in us since we, ya know. Got kicked out and all.” A darkness passed over his face, but it disappeared when Aziraphale gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “So that means, as demons, we _can’t_ be perfect, so we don’t really try. Well, I can’t speak for all demons, really. I’m sure some have complexes about it. We all have our issues. But, just speaking for myself, I knew I was, well. Broken. So, I never wanted to try and be perfect, ‘cause I knew I’d fail.”

“Crowley…” Aziraphale felt his heart breaking.

Crowley shrugged and looked up at him. His eyes were clear and honest. “It’s not really something I’ve thought about much, y’know? Just. No need to be perfect when I can’t, anyway.”

“My dear,” Aziraphale breathed when Crowley didn’t add anything else, “being a demon makes you no less capable of being perfect than an angel. You’ve said it yourself that angels and demons really aren’t so different. That’s the point, I think. Angels are not inherently better. That’s the lesson I needed to learn. So, you see, demons, then, cannot be inherently less.”

Crowley titled his head, then nodded twice. “Well. Fair enough, when you put it like that.” His eyes flicked down to their hands again. “Guess that should rock my world a bit more than it does. But perfection is unattainable either way, then, isn’t it?”

“I believe so.”

“Hmm. Then I guess it’s fine, just like this?”

“Yes. It doesn’t seem worth fussing over, anyway, even if we could be ‘perfect.’ Whatever that may mean for us.”

Crowley huffed a bit at that. “No?”

Aziraphale gave him a sheepish look. “I wouldn’t want you perfect if it wouldn’t be you. It goes both ways, my dear. I love you exactly like this. However you want to be.”

Crowley scoffed as though his face wasn’t rapidly going pink again. “Be a right bloody bore, wouldn’t it?”

“It would.”

“Tea’s gone cold, by the way.”

Aziraphale blinked uncomprehendingly for a moment, then looked over to their oversteeped, cooled tea. “Drat,” he said again, and Crowley laughed. “This is your fault for distracting me!”

“Oo, distracting, am I?”

“You know you are.” Aziraphale got up to start their drinks again from scratch.

“Well, you’ll just have to deal with it. One of my _imperfections,_ you know.”

“And I love you for it, anyway,” Aziraphale replied serenely as he walked off, not bothering to turn back as Crowley gave a few grunts at the unexpected second declaration in as many minutes.

Aziraphale smiled privately to himself. That was the thing about imperfection, really. Sometimes, it was exactly what felt perfect to the heart. This was what none of the other angels up in Heaven understood. It was the inherent flaw in humanity, after all; the imperfection of sin and Knowledge, which was what separated them from holiness, was forever the taint of the species. And yet, Aziraphale knew it was that very reason why he loved humans so much, and why he knew he belonged here among them. Because what did it mean to be perfect, to be unattainable and great? 

It was well enough for the Almighty, but Aziraphale was more…down to Earth.

He scooped up some fresh tea leaves, and only chuckled at himself when he was so distracted by his thoughts that he spilled them across the counter again.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes the penultimate line needs to be a pun, and I won’t apologize for it


End file.
